In Life and In Death
by Johnathan-117
Summary: In prison, Reaper’s time has come. He spends his last few hours writing his final letter to Michael Leeds, and pondering his predicament… Before an eleventh hour save changes his world, and sets the course that will eventually bring him to the UNSC Resolu


Twenty seven years.  
Twenty seven years of laughter, and heartbreak, and loves destroyed, and fear, and self-loathing, and pain.  
Twenty seven years of life, with but a mere handful of hours before it was destroyed, utterly and without mercy.  
Somewhere in there, he should have found poetic justice.  
On the table beside him, his last meal went untouched, for favor of the pen and paper that he'd requested first and foremost. All around him, crumpled remnants of letters were strewn about, ideas and beginnings that were in the end abandoned.  
He leaned back for just a moment, closed his eyes, ran shaking hands through his hair, nervously.  
How was it… that everything was going to end so suddenly?  
He'd never even be able to say goodbye in person.  
Just through a letter, a memento mori, for Michael…  
Pen set to paper again.  
No stopping this time. No turning back…  
There wasn't any time left for such hesitation, now.

_Dearest Michael,  
There's a saying that I'm quite sure you've heard before; that all good things must come to an end. Chaucer said that, though its been attributed to many, many people over the centuries._

And I suppose that, in due time, we both knew that we would inevitably have to face the end of our one, remaining good thing. Rather, my one, remaining good thing, as I make no arrogant wagers about how greatly or minutely I impact your life, with these letters written from prison.

I've been following in the papers – you seem to have been letting yourself slip of late, Michael. Taking a back seat, taking time out of the limelight. Why is that? Is it because you don't want the fame anymore? Or is it because I am the cause of your fame… because in the end, I made you famous, and you and Lashley made me infamous.

Its funny, isn't it, how things work out? How the world can be so stacked against two people that, in the end, not even love can surmount the odds?

I've had a feeling that this night was coming, for some time… because I've been dreaming about you, so much, lately. Every night, there's some new dream of you, some beautiful fantasy or memory that takes me away from these walls, and places me in your arms again. I've dreamt that Lashley never existed, I've dreamt that Lashley was never able to make that call before I ended him… I've dreamt that we ran away together, away from San Francisco, and that no one could ever find us again. Hell, the other day I woke up and I swear I smelled you in the air. But when I rolled over you weren't there. I got mad at myself for getting happy.

And then last night, I dreamt that you came here, to visit me. I dreamt that I opened my eyes and you were sitting on a chair in my cell, watching me sleep…

And then I woke up, and I was alone in my cell, with the warden standing on the other side of the bars.

And at this, I suppose…

I suppose it's time to come to the true subject and purpose of this letter.

After tonight, all good things must come to an end.

There will be no more letters, after this one, Michael… Because in just a few hours, I'll be dead. And ironically, I find that I'm absolutely terrified.

Scientifically, let's examine this procedure. I sit here, having eaten a last meal, having showered, having changed my clothes. I've refused the attendance of a spiritual advisor… but in a way, I wish I hadn't. In time, twenty minutes before my execution is set to start, I'll be strapped to a gurney, and I'll be wheeled into a room with a one-way mirror. On the other side, there will be people, and a great number of them.

At midnight, the warden will give the word. I'll be given a chance to make a last statement, which will be recorded for posterity and the media… then the procedure begins.

First, an injection sodium thiopental. A sedative, ironically. Its meant to keep me from feeling pain, but this procedure progresses too quickly for it to take hold. 5 grams of this will be induced via needle into my left arm – a lethal dose in and of itself, but we don't stop there.

Secondly, pancuronium bromide, a paralytic. Keeps us from thrashing around when the big fun starts.

And lastly, potassium cyanide, to bring about the sum of our experiment here. After that's been induced, 300 mg of it to be precise, I will lose consciousness within a matter of minutes. The cyanide breaks down the cellular wall, specifically targeting those of the brain and my lungs, and I will suffocate after lapsing, essentially, into a comatose state. During this, I would normally convulse, but the paralytic prevents this… to cause less trauma to both the victim and the witnesses.

He leaned back, chewed thoughtfully at the top of his pen for a moment or so. Somehow, it all made him want to laugh.

_Well, there was a little throwback to discussions in med school._

A simple procedure, and a monster dies. And the world is somehow a better place than it was with me simply being given therapy, institutionalized, or kept in prison for the rest of my life. God bless the United Nations.

Now on the other side of that glass, there will be a crowd of wolves, howling for my blood. There will be the parents and families of my victims. There will be the media. And there will be my mother and father, praying for the death of the devil right before their very eyes.

I'm glad you won't be there. I wouldn't want you to see me like that.

In a few days time, you'll be receiving a box, with my things. I… want you to have them, what little I have. Your letters to me, the piercings I wear, my books, the pieces of music I've written here and never had the chance to try playing… Pictures of us… I want you to have them, because my family will destroy them and it will be as if I never existed outside of whatever pictures you took of me. 

I want someone who won't look at them with disgust or spectacle, to have them.

I want someone who loves me for who I could have become, not the monster I was, to hold them close and whisper, "I will remember you."

… and now here come the tears. You can see them on the paper, and I can't bring myself to wipe them away, because they're part of me, and soon there will be nothing left. And I suppose here comes the emotional rambling…

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for everything that's happened. I'm sorry for everything I've ever done. I'm sorry that I failed you.

I really did want to get better, Michael. I tried so hard… I tried so very, very hard, and I really did mean for that boy in the spare room to be the last one… I promised you, and I never broke my promises… you know that…

But Lashley… He… 

I failed you. I failed you because of him. I failed you because he got the best of me, tricked me… I failed you because in the end, maybe there really is no redeeming me. Maybe I really am broken inside, beyond repair.

But broken or not, I know I broke my promise to you, and that hurts more than anything else I've ever known. I failed the man I love beyond all reason, the man who holds the keys to my heart… the man who made me, if only for a short time, know what the words "life is beautiful" really meant. The first time I confessed to how I felt about you… the first time we kissed, in that cemetery where we shared the wine… The first time my hands touched your skin… The first time I laid with you all night, and listened to your heart beating as you slept…

Memories that I wouldn't trade for all the world. Loves like ours are meant to have happy endings, aren't they? So what the fuck did we do wrong? Where did I mess up so badly, that it left us both out in the cold…? I in the grave and you standing before my headstone in the rain? It isn't supposed to be this way!

I've hurt us both in ways that words can't begin to fathom. I've hurt us both so deeply that I don't think anything I can say or do could ever fix us.

And so in the end, there's nothing left to do but say I'm sorry.

And that I love you, Michael Leeds. I love you… but I wish to God again and again that we'd never met. Because I wouldn't be killing us both, now. If I could die remembering you, I would die a happy man. But knowing that I die while you're out there, remembering me and the happiness we used to have, and the pain of my loss… I wish I could make you forget me, utterly.

But I can't.

I can't.

Well… it's taken an eternity to write this letter.

I can hear footsteps coming down the hall.

And I can hear the wheels. Little screeching things, singing over linoleum floors in their little metal brackets… 

Its time.  
Our good thing has come to an end.

Its time for us to say goodbye.

I love you, Michael Leeds. More than life itself.

Please don't forget me?

Yours eternally,

Damien Caleb Reaper  
  
He let the pen slip from his hands, as the sob escaped him like a criminal in the night… and as he heard the footsteps pause outside the door, buried his face in his hands and began to weep, silently, for what he was about to take from the man he loved the most.

Colonel Winters cursed, as he ran full tilt across the grounds of San Quentin State Prison, a folder in hand… As he looked at the watch on his wrist.  
How the entire thing had been so bungled, he wasn't certain…  
But it was his job to make sure that the program stayed on target...  
The Last Right had to be given as an option, even to a monster like Damien Reaper…

The room was cold.   
Much colder than he'd expected it to be – he shivered as the first kiss of cold air touched his skin.  
No one said a word to him, as they wheeled the gurney before the one-way mirror. He caught his reflection, and marveled at it for just a few moments. Pale and drawn, with his eerie green-yellow eyes, with their ring of red, wide and frightened. His lower lip quivered, faintly… his body shook, just barely discernable from his vantage at least… His hands were balled into tight fists, the knuckles having turned white…  
Hands on his arm, rolling up his sleeve… skin against his made him jump, utter a soft hiss of fear…  
"Any last words, Mister Reaper?" The warden's voice sounded, from behind the glass.  
Last words…? He had ten thousand of them… but none of them, not one, were words that the monsters on the other side of the glass deserved to hear.  
"… N…No." Was what he said instead, his voice a murderer's hiss, the voice of a killer from a child's nightmares… and a faint smile graced his lips. "… I have nothing to say."  
"… Carry out sentence-"  
"Just a request, warden."  
"… Yes?"  
"I find the idea of dying in my sleep to be wholly abhorrent." He closed his eyes, smile still present. "But I find the idea of being paralyzed and unable to do anything even more so. Cut the pancuronium bromide? I think these people would rather see me suffer anyways."  
"… Request granted, Mister Reaper. Carry out sentence."  
A small alcohol swab swept over his skin, and he shivered, closed his eyes for a moment or so as the needle pressed against his flesh… then entered it smoothly.  
_First, an injection sodium thiopental. A sedative, ironically…_  
And then came the big guns… A much smaller dose than the sodium thiopental…  
For a few seconds, the thought occurred to him that it didn't hurt at all.  
Then the liquid fire lashed through his veins, up his arm… he was dimly aware that he screamed…  
Before quick as darkness enveloped a room when the light was shut off, the fire touched his heart, and he couldn't scream, couldn't breathe…   
Pale eyes opened wide, as he tried to open his mouth to gasp in air… before they fixed on the ceiling…  
There's a stain up there… The thought came sluggishly, through the liquid fire that was spreading quickly through his body. Guess it leaks in here, when it rains…  
Then the fire slammed against the base of his skull, and Damien Reaper's thoughts went silent…  
The door to the witness's viewing room slammed open, loudly.  
The warden blinked in surprise, at the military man illuminated in the doorway, out of breath, terror in the officer's eyes…  
And the warden paled, before his hand fumbled for the intercom's button.  
"Temporary stay of execution! You have five minutes!"   
Those within the room uttered cries of outrage and protest… one woman burst into hysterical sobs…  
And within the execution chamber, attendants worked feverishly to revive the man on the gurney.  
Colonel Winters bit his lower lip, as he watched the scene unfolding within… And once the man on the gurney gasped in a breath of air that sounded more like a scream, arched his back in pain, the Colonel stepped around the warden, to the door that linked the two rooms…  
Dearest Michael,  
_  
You won't ever get this letter, but I'm writing it anyways._

Isn't it funny, how things in our lives work out?

Isn't it funny how a monster can receive an eleventh-hour, fifty-ninth-minute, fifty-ninth second reprieve?

Here I sit, on a transport to Eradius… With three MPs sitting in front of me, and another one to either side… Instead of lying dead in the grave.

I was clinically dead for five minutes, they said… before Colonel Winters made it to the execution chambers.

Apparently, every death row convict is supposed to get something that I've never heard of before. Its called the Last Right.

It's a choice. To enlist in the armed forces. To become an ODST for the UNSC Marine Corps… or to accept sentence and die. If you enlist… apparently, you've got a chance to redeem yourself… To get these marks off your arms and the chance to live a normal life again.

… I did what I had to do.

But I paid a heavy price.

I won't get to write to you. I won't get to call you. You'll never know, until I finish the program, that I'm even still alive…

And part of me thinks that I'll never tell you.

So in the end… A goodbye is still a goodbye.

Wish me luck.

Damien Caleb Reaper


End file.
